American Express is joining the crypto trading gold rush with an investment in institutional digital asset platform FalconX
American Express Ventures joins existing investors Accel, Accomplice VC, Coinbase Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Flybridge Capital Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Avon Ventures, adding to a $17 million funding round FalconX announced in May.
Trading as principal, FalconX provides institutional clients the ability to access cryptocurrency markets through a single platform for trading, credit, and clearing.
The company serves 250 institutional clients, up 150% from May 2020, and its transaction volumes have tripled to around $3 billion on a monthly basis.
“FalconX is helping bring simplicity to the increasingly complex digital asset space through a platform that provides discovery and pricing all in one place,” says Harshul Sanghi, global head of Amex Ventures. “Amex Ventures invests in startups as a way to better understand emerging areas of the payments ecosystem, and we are pleased to support FalconX as it continues to drive innovation in the digital asset space, including digital currencies.”
Elsewhere on the crypto front, blockchain infrastructure firm Paxos has closed a $142 million Series C round of funding, led by Declaration Partners. PayPal Ventures, which uses Paxos crypto broker platform for its recently-announced bitcoin offering, also renewed its investments.
Charles Cascarilla, CEO and co-founder of Paxos, commented, "In the last year, global adoption of crypto and blockchain-based solutions by enterprises has accelerated. We are proud to count among our clients' global leaders in payments, banking, trading and fintech, such as PayPal, Credit Suisse, Societe Generale and Revolut. Paxos is uniquely positioned to address the digital asset needs of global brands and bring our solutions to enterprises with trillions in assets and billions of end users."
He says the company will double the size of its team and and scale its technology to cater for the opportunities opening up in the white hot crypto space.